This page in a nutshell: Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. Additionally, quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by inline citations.

In Wikipedia, verifiability means that other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source. Wikipedia does not publish original research, its content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors. Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it.[1] When reliable sources disagree, maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight.

All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. Please immediately remove contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced.

Responsibility for providing citations

All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution.[2]

Attribute all quotations and any material whose verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. The cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article. Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate). See Citing sources for details of how to do this.

Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article; in some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step.[3] When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source for the content, and therefore it may not be verifiable.[4] If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it.

Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people[5] or existing groups, and do not move it to the talk page. You should also be aware of how the BLP policy applies to groups.

Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Source material must have been published, the definition of which for our purposes is "made available to the public in some form".[6]Unpublished materials are not considered reliable. Use sources that directly support the material presented in an article and are appropriate to the claims made, the appropriateness of any source depends on the context. The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source. Be especially careful when sourcing content related to living people or medicine.

If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources, such as in history, medicine, and science.

Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include:

Newspaper and magazine blogs

Several newspapers, magazines, and other news organizations host columns on their web sites that they call blogs, these may be acceptable sources if the writers are professionals, but use them with caution because the blog may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process.[7] If a news organization publishes an opinion piece in a blog, attribute the statement to the writer (e.g. "Jane Smith wrote..."). Never use as sources the blog comments that are left by readers, for personal or group blogs that are not reliable sources, see Self-published sources below.

Reliable sources noticeboard and WP:IRS

To discuss the reliability of a specific source for a particular statement, consult the reliable sources noticeboard, which seeks to apply this policy to particular cases, for a guideline discussing the reliability of particular types of sources, see Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (WP:IRS). In the case of inconsistency between this policy and the WP:IRS guideline, or any other guideline related to sourcing, this policy has priority.

Sources that are usually not reliable

Questionable sources

Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest,[8] such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely considered by other sources to be extremist or promotional, or that rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion. Questionable sources should only be used as sources for material on themselves, such as in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others.

Self-published sources

Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings, are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.[7] Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have published it in independent reliable sources.[9]Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.

Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves

"WP:SOCIALMEDIA" redirects here. For the policy on what Wikipedia is not, see WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK.

"WP:TWITTER" redirects here. For the external links essay, see WP:Twitter-EL.

Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

Do not use articles from Wikipedia (whether this English Wikipedia or Wikipedias in other languages) as sources. Also, do not use websites that mirror Wikipedia content or publications that rely on material from Wikipedia as sources. Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources. Confirm that these sources support the content, then use them directly.[10] (There is also a risk of circular reference/circular reporting when using a Wikipedia article or derivative work as a source.)

An exception is allowed when Wikipedia itself is being discussed in the article, which may cite an article, guideline, discussion, statistic, or other content from Wikipedia (or a sister project) to support a statement about Wikipedia. Wikipedia or the sister project is a primary source in this case, and may be used following the policy for primary sources. Any such use should avoid original research, undue emphasis on Wikipedia's role or views, and inappropriate self-reference, the article text should make it clear that the material is sourced from Wikipedia so the reader is made aware of the potential bias.

Accessibility

Access to sources

Some reliable sources may not be easily accessible, for example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only in university libraries. Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. If you have trouble accessing a source, others may be able to do so on your behalf (see WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Non-English sources

Citing non-English sources

Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance, as with sources in English, if a dispute arises involving a citation to a non-English source, editors may request that a quotation of relevant portions of the original source be provided, either in text, in a footnote, or on the article talk page.[11] (See Template:Request quotation.)

Quoting non-English sources

If you quote a non-English reliable source (whether in the main text or in a footnote), a translation into English should always accompany the quote. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. When using a machine translation of source material, editors should be reasonably certain that the translation is accurate and the source is appropriate. Editors should not rely upon machine translations of non-English sources in contentious articles or biographies of living people. If needed, ask an editor who can translate it for you.

In articles, the original text is usually included with the translated text when translated by Wikipedians, and the translating editor is usually not cited. When quoting any material, whether in English or in some other language, be careful not to violate copyright; see the fair-use guideline.

Other issues

Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion

While information must be verifiable in order to be included in an article, this does not mean that all verifiable information must be included in an article. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article, and that it should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.

Tagging a sentence, section, or article

If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, you can tag a sentence with the {{citation needed}} template by writing {{cn}} or {{fact}}. There are other templates here for tagging sections or entire articles. You can also leave a note on the talk page asking for a source, or move the material to the talk page and ask for a source there. To request verification that a reference supports the text, tag it with {{verification needed}}. Material that fails verification may be tagged with {{failed verification}} or removed. When using templates to tag material, it is helpful to other editors if you explain your rationale in the template, edit summary, or on the talk page.

Take special care with material about living people. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately, not tagged or moved to the talk page.

surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources;

challenged claims that are supported purely by primary or self-published sources or those with an apparent conflict of interest;[8]

reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, or against an interest they had previously defended;

claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living people. This is especially true when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.

Verifiability and other principles

Copyright and plagiarism

Do not plagiarize or breach copyright when using sources. Summarize source material in your own words as much as possible; when quoting or closely paraphrasing a source use an inline citation, and in-text attribution where appropriate.

Do not link to any source that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations. You can link to websites that display copyrighted works as long as the website has licensed the work, or uses the work in a way compliant with fair use. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory copyright infringement. If there is reason to think a source violates copyright, do not cite it. This is particularly relevant when linking to sites such as Scribd or YouTube, where due care should be taken to avoid linking to material that violates copyright.

Neutrality

Even when information is cited to reliable sources, you must present it with a neutral point of view (NPOV). All articles must adhere to NPOV, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views need not be included, except in articles devoted to them. If there is disagreement between sources, use in-text attribution: "John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y," followed by an inline citation. Sources themselves do not need to maintain a neutral point of view. Indeed, many reliable sources are not neutral. Our job as editors is simply to summarize what the reliable sources say.

Notes

^This principle was previously expressed on this policy page as "the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth." See the essay, WP:Verifiability, not truth.

^Once an editor has provided any source that he or she believes, in good faith, to be sufficient, then any editor who later removes the material has an obligation to articulate specific problems that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia (e.g., undue emphasis on a minor point, unencyclopedic content, etc.). All editors are then expected to help achieve consensus, and any problems with the text or sourcing should be fixed before the material is added back.

^It may be that the article contains so few citations that it is impractical to add specific citation needed tags, in which case consider tagging a section with {{unreferencedsection}}, or the article with {{refimprove}} or {{unreferenced}}. In the case of a disputed category or on a disambiguation page, consider asking for a citation on the talk page.

^When tagging or removing such material, please keep in mind that such edits can be easily misunderstood. Some editors object to others making chronic, frequent, and large-scale deletions of unsourced information, especially if unaccompanied by other efforts to improve the material. Do not concentrate only on material of a particular POV, as that may result in accusations that you are in violation of WP:NPOV. Also check to see whether the material is sourced to a citation elsewhere on the page, for all of these reasons, it is advisable to communicate clearly that you have a considered reason to believe that the material in question cannot be verified.

^Wales, Jimmy. "Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information", WikiEN-l, May 16, 2006: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong, it should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."

^This includes material such as documents in publicly accessible archives, inscriptions on monuments, gravestones, etc., that are available for anyone to see.

^ abSources that may have interests other than professional considerations in the matter being reported are considered to be conflicted sources. Further examples of sources with conflicts of interest include but are not limited to articles by any media group that promote the holding company of the media group or discredit its competitors; news reports by journalists having financial interests in the companies being reported or in their competitors; material (including but not limited to news reports, books, articles and other publications) involved in or struck down by litigation in any country, or released by parties involved in litigation against other involved parties, during, before or after the litigation; and promotional material released through media in the form of paid news reports. For definitions of sources with conflict of interest:

The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, Columbia University mentions: "A conflict of interest involves the abuse – actual, apparent, or potential – of the trust that people have in professionals. The simplest working definition states: A conflict of interest is a situation in which financial or other personal considerations have the potential to compromise or bias professional judgment and objectivity. An apparent conflict of interest is one in which a reasonable person would think that the professional's judgment is likely to be compromised. A potential conflict of interest involves a situation that may develop into an actual conflict of interest, it is important to note that a conflict of interest exists whether or not decisions are affected by a personal interest; a conflict of interest implies only the potential for bias, not a likelihood. It is also important to note that a conflict of interest is not considered misconduct in research, since the definition for misconduct is currently limited to fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism."

The New York Times Company forwards this understanding: "Conflicts of interest, real or apparent, may come up in many areas. They may involve the relationships of staff members with readers, news sources, advocacy groups, advertisers, or competitors; with one another, or with the newspaper or its parent company. And at a time when two-career families are the norm, the civic and professional activities of spouses, family and companions can create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts."

^Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of content. Further examples of self-published sources include press releases, material contained within company websites, advertising campaigns, material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group, self-released music albums and electoral manifestos:

The University of California, Berkeley library states: "Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view. Even within university and library web sites, there can be many pages that the institution does not try to oversee."

Princeton University offers this understanding in its publication, Academic Integrity at Princeton (2011): "Unlike most books and journal articles, which undergo strict editorial review before publication, much of the information on the Web is self-published. To be sure, there are many websites in which you can have confidence: mainstream newspapers, refereed electronic journals, and university, library, and government collections of data, but for vast amounts of Web-based information, no impartial reviewers have evaluated the accuracy or fairness of such material before it's made instantly available across the globe."

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition states, "any Internet site that does not have a specific publisher or sponsoring body should be treated as unpublished or self-published work."

^ abWhen there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy. Do not violate the source's copyright when doing so.

^Hume, David. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Forgotten Books, 1984, pp. 82, 86; first published in 1748 as Philosophical enquiries concerning human Understanding, (or the Oxford 1894 edition OL7067396M at para. 91) "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence. ... That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior." In the 18th century, Pierre-Simon Laplace reformulated the idea as "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." Marcello Truzzi recast it again, in 1978, as "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." Carl Sagan, finally, popularized the concept broadly as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" in 1980 on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage; this was the formulation originally used on Wikipedia.

Further reading

Wales, Jimmy. "Insist on sources", WikiEN-l, July 19, 2006: "I really want to encourage a much stronger culture which says: it is better to have no information, than to have information like this, with no sources."—referring to a rather unlikely statement about the founders of Google throwing pies at each other.

Cambridge University Press
–
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the worlds oldest publishing house and it also holds letters patent as the Queens Printer. The Presss mission is To further the Universitys mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning

1.
The University Printing House, on the main site of the Press

2.
The letters patent of Cambridge University Press by Henry VIII allow the Press to print "all manner of books". The fine initial with the king's portrait inside it and the large first line of script are still discernible.

3.
The Pitt Building in Cambridge, which used to be the headquarters of Cambridge University Press, and now serves as a conference centre for the Press.

4.
On the main site of the Press

Blog
–
A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of an individual, occasionally of a small group. In the 2010s, mult

Internet forum
–
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before

Social media
–
Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. User-generated content, such as posts or comments, digital photos or videos. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are desig

1.
Diagram depicting the many different types of social media

2.
Banner in Bangkok, observed on the 30th of June 2014, informing the Thai public that 'like' or 'share' activity on social media may land them in jail.

Twitter
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Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, tweets, restricted to 140 characters. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them, users access Twitter through its website interface, SMS or a mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, Califo

4.
Twitter's San Francisco, California headquarters, as seen from a corner on Market Street

Tumblr
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Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007, and owned by Yahoo. since 2013. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, Users can follow other users blogs. Bloggers can also make their blogs private, for bloggers, many of the websites features are accessed from a das

1.
The Tumblr homepage when a user is not signed in, as of May 2013. A different background image is displayed each time the page is loaded.

4.
Tumblr's headquarters is on East 21st Street in New York City. The offices are on the 10th floor.

Reddit
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Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Reddits registered community members can submit content, such as posts or direct links. Registered users can then vote submissions up or down to organize the posts, the submissions with the most positive votes appear on the front page or the top of a category

Facebook
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Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California. Facebook gradually added support for students at other universities. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement. The F

4.
Billboard on the Thomson Reuters building welcomes Facebook to NASDAQ, 2012

Circular reference
–
A circular reference is a series of references where the last object references the first, resulting in a closed loop. A circular reference is not to be confused with the logical fallacy of a circular argument, sentences containing circular referents can still be meaningful, Her brother gave her a kitten, his sister thanked him for it. Is circular

1.
Circular reference (in red)

Circular reporting
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In source criticism, circular reporting or false confirmation is a situation where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in fact is coming from only one source. In most cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy intelligence gathering practices, but in a few cases and this problem occurs in variety

1.
External video

2.
Two basic ways that circular reporting can happen. Dashed lines indicate sourcing that isn't visible to the final reviewer. In both cases, one original source (top) appears to the final reviewer (bottom) as two independent sources

Primary source
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It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, generally, accounts written after the fact with th

English Wikipedia
–
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001, it is the first edition of Wikipedia and, as of April 2017, nearly 12. 2% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. This share has declined from more than 50 percent in 2003. There are 5,376,947 ar

1.
Logo of the English Wikipedia

Conspiracy theory
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Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is a derogatory one, people formulate conspiracy theories to explain, for example, power relations in social groups and the perceived existence of evil forces. Conspiracy theories have chiefly psychological or socio-politic

1.
The Eye of Providence, or the all-seeing eye of God, seen here on the US $1 bill, has been taken by some to be evidence of a conspiracy involving the founders of the United States.

Scribd
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Scribd /ˈskrɪbd/ is a digital library and e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. In addition, Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its publishing platform. Scribds e-book subscription service is available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, Scribd has 80 million users, a

YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos

Secondary source
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In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. However, as discussed in detail in the section below on classification, secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. Primary and secondary ar

1.
Scipione Amati 's History of the Kingdom of Voxu (1615) an example of a secondary source.

LIST OF IMAGES

1.
Cambridge University Press
–
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the worlds oldest publishing house and it also holds letters patent as the Queens Printer. The Presss mission is To further the Universitys mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, Cambridge University Press is a department of the University of Cambridge and is both an academic and educational publisher. With a global presence, publishing hubs, and offices in more than 40 countries. Its publishing includes journals, monographs, reference works, textbooks. Cambridge University Press is an enterprise that transfers part of its annual surplus back to the university. Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house in the world and the oldest university press and it originated from Letters Patent granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534, and has been producing books continuously since the first University Press book was printed. Cambridge is one of the two privileged presses, authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. In 1591, Thomass successor, John Legate, printed the first Cambridge Bible, the London Stationers objected strenuously, claiming that they had the monopoly on Bible printing. The universitys response was to point out the provision in its charter to print all manner of books. In July 1697 the Duke of Somerset made a loan of £200 to the university towards the house and presse and James Halman, Registrary of the University. It was in Bentleys time, in 1698, that a body of scholars was appointed to be responsible to the university for the Presss affairs. The Press Syndicates publishing committee still meets regularly, and its role still includes the review, John Baskerville became University Printer in the mid-eighteenth century. Baskervilles concern was the production of the finest possible books using his own type-design, a technological breakthrough was badly needed, and it came when Lord Stanhope perfected the making of stereotype plates. This involved making a mould of the surface of a page of type. The Press was the first to use this technique, and in 1805 produced the technically successful, under the stewardship of C. J. Clay, who was University Printer from 1854 to 1882, the Press increased the size and scale of its academic and educational publishing operation. An important factor in this increase was the inauguration of its list of schoolbooks, during Clays administration, the Press also undertook a sizable co-publishing venture with Oxford, the Revised Version of the Bible, which was begun in 1870 and completed in 1885. It was Wright who devised the plan for one of the most distinctive Cambridge contributions to publishing—the Cambridge Histories, the Cambridge Modern History was published between 1902 and 1912

Cambridge University Press
–
The University Printing House, on the main site of the Press
Cambridge University Press
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The letters patent of Cambridge University Press by Henry VIII allow the Press to print "all manner of books". The fine initial with the king's portrait inside it and the large first line of script are still discernible.
Cambridge University Press
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The Pitt Building in Cambridge, which used to be the headquarters of Cambridge University Press, and now serves as a conference centre for the Press.
Cambridge University Press
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On the main site of the Press

2.
Blog
–
A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of an individual, occasionally of a small group. In the 2010s, multi-author blogs have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors, MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other microblogging systems helps integrate MABs, Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. In the 2010s, the majority are interactive Web 2.0 websites, allowing visitors to leave online comments, in that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking service. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs, however, there are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments. Many blogs provide commentary on a subject or topic, ranging from politics to sports. Others function as more personal online diaries, and others function more as online brand advertising of an individual or company. A typical blog combines text, digital images, and links to blogs, web pages. The ability of readers to leave publicly viewable comments, and interact with other commenters, is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs, however, blog owners or authors often moderate and filter online comments to remove hate speech or other offensive content. Most blogs are primarily textual, although focus on art, photographs, videos, music. In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources and these blogs are referred to as edublogs. Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts, on 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. On 20 February 2014, there were around 172 million Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs in existence worldwide, according to critics and other bloggers, Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today. However, Blogger does not offer public statistics, Technorati lists 1.3 million blogs as of February 22,2014. The term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997, the short form, blog, was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme. com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used blog as both a noun and verb and devised the term blogger in connection with Pyra Labs Blogger product, in the 1990s, Internet forum software, created running conversations with threads

3.
Internet forum
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An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have a set of jargon associated with them, example. A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure, a forum can contain a number of subforums, within a forums topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish. Depending on the settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages, the modern forum originated from bulletin boards, and so-called computer conferencing systems, and are a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content, early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup, allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages. Later developments emulated the different newsgroups or individual lists, providing more than one forum, Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries. Japan posts the most with two million per day on their largest forum, 2channel. China also has millions of posts on forums such as Tianya Club. Some of the very first forum systems were the Planet-Forum system, developed in the beginning of the 1970-s, the EIES system, first operational in 1976, one of the first forum sites, and still active today, is Delphi Forums, once called Delphi. The service, with four members, dates to 1983. Forums perform a similar to that of dial-up bulletin board systems. Early web-based forums date back as far as 1994, with the WIT project from W3 Consortium and starting from this time, a sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users. Technology, video games, sports, music, fashion, religion, and politics are popular areas for forum themes, Internet slang and image macros popular across the Internet are abundant and widely used in Internet forums. Forum software packages are available on the Internet and are written in a variety of programming languages, such as PHP, Perl, Java. The configuration and records of posts can be stored in files or in a database. Each package offers different features, from the most basic, providing text-only postings, to more advanced packages, offering multimedia support, many packages can be integrated easily into an existing website to allow visitors to post comments on articles

4.
Social media
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Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. User-generated content, such as posts or comments, digital photos or videos. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the media organization. Social media facilitate the development of social networks by connecting a users profile with those of other individuals or groups. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities and individuals, Social media changes the way individuals and large organizations communicate. These changes are the focus of the field of technoself studies. In America, a reported that 84 percent of adolescents in America have a Facebook account. Over 60% of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, according to Nielsen, Internet users continue to spend more time on social media sites than on any other type of site. For content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone beyond simply social sharing to building a reputation and bringing in career opportunities and monetary income. Social media differ from paper-based or traditional media such as TV broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy. Social media operate in a Dialogic transmission system and this is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a monologic transmission model, such as a paper newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers. Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook, Gab, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp, and YouTube. These social media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users, observers have noted a range of positive and negative impacts of social media use. At the same time, concerns have been raised about possible links between social media use and depression, and even the issues of cyberbullying, online harassment. Currently, about half of adults have been cyberbullied and of those,20 percent said that they have been cyberbullied on a regular basis. Another survey was carried out among 7th grade students in America which is known as the Precaution Process Adoption Model, according to this study,69 percent of 7th grade students claim to have experienced cyberbullying and they also said that it is worse than face to face bullying. The variety and evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services introduces a challenge of definition, the terminology is unclear, with some referring to social media as social networks. A2015 paper reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four commonalities unique to then-current social media services, in 2016, Merriam-Webster defined social media as Forms of electronic communication through which people create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, etc

Social media
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Diagram depicting the many different types of social media
Social media
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Banner in Bangkok, observed on the 30th of June 2014, informing the Thai public that 'like' or 'share' activity on social media may land them in jail.

5.
Twitter
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Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, tweets, restricted to 140 characters. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them, users access Twitter through its website interface, SMS or a mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, United States, Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams and launched in July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, in 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has described as the SMS of the Internet. As of 2016, Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users. On the day of the 2016 U. S. presidential election, Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news, Twitters origins lie in a daylong brainstorming session held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then a student at New York University. The original project name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr. The developers initially considered 10958 as a code, but later changed it to 40404 for ease of use. Work on the project started on March 21,2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9,50 PM Pacific Standard Time, Dorsey has explained the origin of the Twitter title. we came across the word twitter, and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds, and thats exactly what the product was. The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as a service for Odeo employees. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitters startup until 2011, Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007. Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview, With Twitter and they called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didnt replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is, Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network, the tipping point for Twitters popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000, the Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages, remarked Newsweeks Steven Levy

Twitter
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A blueprint sketch, c. 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS -based social network.
Twitter
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Twitter's homepage as of August 2015 (only in select countries)
Twitter
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Jack Dorsey, a co-founder and the chairman of Twitter, in 2009
Twitter
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Twitter's San Francisco, California headquarters, as seen from a corner on Market Street

6.
Tumblr
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Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007, and owned by Yahoo. since 2013. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, Users can follow other users blogs. Bloggers can also make their blogs private, for bloggers, many of the websites features are accessed from a dashboard interface. As of April 1,2017, Tumblr hosts over 341.8 million blogs, as of January 2016, the website had 555 million monthly visitors. Development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a gap between contracts at David Karps software consulting company, Davidville. Karp had been interested in tumblelogs for some time and was waiting for one of the established blogging platforms to introduce their own tumblelogging platform, as no one had done so after a year of waiting, Karp and developer Marco Arment began working on their own tumblelogging platform. Tumblr was launched in February 2007 and within two weeks, the service had gained 75,000 users, Arment left the company in September 2010 to focus on Instapaper. In early June 2012, Tumblr featured its first major advertising campaign in conjunction with Adidas. Adidas launched an official soccer Tumblr blog and bought placements on the user dashboard and this launch was only two months after Tumblr announced it would be moving towards paid advertising on its site. On May 20,2013, it was announced that Yahoo. many of Tumblrs users were unhappy with the news, causing some to start a petition, achieving nearly 170,000 signatures. David Karp remained CEO and the deal was finalized on June 20,2013, Dashboard, The dashboard is the primary tool for the typical Tumblr user. It is a feed of recent posts from blogs that they follow. Through the dashboard, users are able to comment, reblog, the dashboard allows the user to upload text posts, images, video, quotes, or links to their blog with a click of a button displayed at the top of the dashboard. Users are also able to connect their blogs to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, so whenever they make a post, it also be sent as a tweet. Queue, Users are able to set up a schedule to delay posts that they make and they can spread their posts over several hours or even days. Tags, Users can help their audience find posts about certain topics by adding tags, HTML editing, Tumblr allows users to edit their blogs theme HTML coding to control the appearance of their blog. Users are also able to use a domain name for their blog. With Tumblrs 2009 acquisition of Tumblerette, an iOS application created by Jeff Rock and Garrett Ross, the site became available to BlackBerry smartphones on April 17,2010 via a Mobelux application in BlackBerry World

Tumblr
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The Tumblr homepage when a user is not signed in, as of May 2013. A different background image is displayed each time the page is loaded.
Tumblr
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Founder and CEO, David Karp
Tumblr
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Former CTO, Marco Arment
Tumblr
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Tumblr's headquarters is on East 21st Street in New York City. The offices are on the 10th floor.

7.
Reddit
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Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Reddits registered community members can submit content, such as posts or direct links. Registered users can then vote submissions up or down to organize the posts, the submissions with the most positive votes appear on the front page or the top of a category. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called subreddits, the subreddit topics include news, science, gaming, movies, music, books, fitness, food, and image-sharing, among many others. The sites terms of use prohibit behaviors such as harassment, as of 2017, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors, ranking #7 most visited web-site in US and #22 in the world. Across 2015, Reddit saw 82.54 billion pageviews,73.15 million submissions,725.85 million comments, Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Condé Nast Publications acquired the site in October 2006, Reddit became a direct subsidiary of Condé Nasts parent company, Advance Publications, in September 2011. As of August 2012, Reddit operates as an independent entity, Reddit is based in San Francisco, California. In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg. Their investment saw the company valued at $500 million, the site is a collection of entries submitted by its registered users, essentially a bulletin board system. The name Reddit is a play-on-words with the phrase read it, as of May 2016, these include, Note, There are over 11,400 active subreddits with a default set of 50 subreddits as of February 2016. When items are submitted to a subreddit, the users, called redditors, each subreddit has a front page that shows newer submissions that have been rated highly. Redditors can also post comments about the submission, and respond back and forth in a conversation-tree of comments, the front page of the site itself shows a combination of the highest-rated posts out of all the subreddits a user is subscribed to. Front-page rank – for both the front page and for individual subreddits – is determined by the age of the submission, positive to negative feedback ratio. Dozens of submissions cycle through these front pages daily, the sites logo and its mascot is a line drawing of an alien nicknamed Snoo. Subreddits often use themed variants of Snoo relevant to the subject, registering an account with Reddit is free and does not require an email address to complete. As of June 2015, there were 36 million user accounts, when logged in, Reddit users have the ability to vote on submissions and comments to increase or decrease their visibility and submit links and comments. Users can also create their own subreddit on a topic of their choosing, for example, as of May 2015, the Wikipedia subreddit – subtitled the most interesting pages on Wikipedia – has over 151,000 subscribers

8.
Facebook
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Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California. Facebook gradually added support for students at other universities. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement. The Facebook name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students, Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, in groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complain about or block unpleasant people, because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen, Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13,2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard & Poors 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion, Facebook has more than 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31,2016. As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only. Zuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash on October 28,2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore, to accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of Harvards computer network and copied private dormitory ID images. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online, the site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section and he shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004 and he said that he was inspired by an editorial about the Facemash incident in The Harvard Crimson. On February 4,2004, Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook, originally located at thefacebook. com. com and they claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation and they later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, within the first month, eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website

9.
Circular reference
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A circular reference is a series of references where the last object references the first, resulting in a closed loop. A circular reference is not to be confused with the logical fallacy of a circular argument, sentences containing circular referents can still be meaningful, Her brother gave her a kitten, his sister thanked him for it. Is circular but not without meaning, indeed, it can be argued that self-reference is a necessary consequence of Aristotles Law of non-contradiction, a fundamental philosophical axiom. In this view, without self-reference, logic and mathematics become impossible, or at least, Circular references can appear in computer programming when one piece of code requires the result from another, but that code needs the result from the first. For example, Function A will show the time the sun last set based on the current date, Function B will calculate the date based on the number of times the moon has orbited the earth since the last time Function B was called. So, Function B asks Function C just how many times that is, Function C doesnt know, but can figure it out by calling Function A to get the time the sun last set. The entire set of functions is now worthless because none of them can return any useful information whatsoever and this leads to what is technically known as a livelock. It also appears in spreadsheets when two cells require each others result, a circular reference represents a big problem in computing. A deadlock occurs when two or more processes are waiting for another to release a resource. From the technical documentation at Microsoft, The FOREIGN KEY constraints cannot be used to create a self-referencing or circular FOREIGN KEY constraint, for Oracle and PostgreSQL the problem with updating a circular reference can be solved by defining the corresponding foreign keys as deferrable. In that case the constraint is checked at the end of the not at the time the DML statement is executed. To update a circular reference two statements can be issued in a transaction that will satisfy both references once the transaction is committed. Only inner joins are supported and are specified by a comparison of columns from different tables, a circular join is a SQL query that links three or more tables together into a circuit. Oracle uses the term Cyclic to designate a circular reference, a distinction should be made with processes containing a circular reference between those that are incomputable and those that are an iterative calculation with a final output. The latter may fail in spreadsheets not equipped to them but are nevertheless still logically valid. Catch-22 Chicken or the egg Circular reporting Halting problem Nested function Regress argument Self-reference Theres a hole in the bucket

Circular reference
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Circular reference (in red)

10.
Circular reporting
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In source criticism, circular reporting or false confirmation is a situation where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in fact is coming from only one source. In most cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy intelligence gathering practices, but in a few cases and this problem occurs in variety of fields, including intelligence gathering, journalism, and scholarly research. Wikipedia is sometimes criticized for being used as a source of circular reporting, Wikipedia advises all researchers and journalists to be wary of using Wikipedia as a direct source, and instead focus on verifiable information found in an articles cited references. In the following examples, false claims were made due to circular reporting, Wikipedia and Der Spiegel in 2009, regarding Karl-Theodor Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. Wikipedia and The Independent in 2007, propagating the false information that Sacha Baron Cohen worked at Goldman Sachs, Wikipedia and coati beginning in 2008, when an arbitrary addition also known as. Media echo chamber Circular reference Ghost word Hoax Rumor Reliability of Wikipedia Wikipedia, List of citogenesis incidents

Circular reporting
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External video
Circular reporting
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Two basic ways that circular reporting can happen. Dashed lines indicate sourcing that isn't visible to the final reviewer. In both cases, one original source (top) appears to the final reviewer (bottom) as two independent sources

11.
Primary source
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It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, generally, accounts written after the fact with the benefit of hindsight are secondary. A secondary source may also be a primary source depending on how it is used, Primary and secondary should be understood as relative terms, with sources categorized according to specific historical contexts and what is being studied. In scholarly writing, an important objective of classifying sources is to determine their independence, sreedharan believes that primary sources have the most direct connection to the past and that they speak for themselves in ways that cannot be captured through the filter of secondary sources. In scholarly writing, the objective of classifying sources is to determine the independence, though the terms primary source and secondary source originated in historiography as a way to trace the history of historical ideas, they have been applied to many other fields. For example, these ideas may be used to trace the history of theories, literary elements. In scientific literature, a source is the original publication of a scientists new data, results. In political history, primary sources are documents such as reports, speeches, pamphlets, posters, or letters by participants, official election returns. In religious history, the sources are religious texts and descriptions of religious ceremonies. A study of history could include fictional sources such as novels or plays. In a broader sense primary sources also include artifacts like photographs, newsreels, coins, historians may also take archaeological artifacts and oral reports and interviews into consideration. Written sources may be divided into three types, narrative sources or literary sources tell a story or message. They are not limited to fictional sources but include diaries, films, biographies, leading philosophical works, diplomatic sources include charters and other legal documents which usually follow a set format. Social documents are created by organizations, such as registers of births. In historiography, when the study of history is subject to historical scrutiny, for a biography of a historian, that historians publications would be primary sources. Documentary films can be considered a source or primary source

Primary source
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This wall painting found in the Roman city of Pompeii is an example of a primary source about people in Pompeii in Roman times. (Portrait of Paquius Proculo)
Primary source
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From a letter of Philip II, King of Spain, 16th century

12.
English Wikipedia
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The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001, it is the first edition of Wikipedia and, as of April 2017, nearly 12. 2% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. This share has declined from more than 50 percent in 2003. There are 5,376,947 articles on the site, in October 2015, the combined text of the English Wikipedias articles totalled 11.5 gigabytes when compressed. On 1 November 2015, the English Wikipedia announced it had reached 5,000,000 articles, the Simple English Wikipedia is a variation in which most of the articles use only basic English vocabulary. There is also the Old English Wikipedia, community-produced news publications include The Signpost. The English Wikipedia was the first Wikipedia edition and has remained the largest and it has pioneered many ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages. The English Wikipedia has adopted features from Wikipedias in other languages and these features include verified revisions from the German Wikipedia and town population-lookup templates from the Dutch Wikipedia. Although the English Wikipedia stores images and audio files, as well as files, many of the images have been moved to Wikimedia Commons with the same name. However, the English Wikipedia also has images and audio/video files. Many of the most active participants in the Wikimedia Foundation, over 800,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. 300,000 editors edit Wikipedia every month, of these, over 30,000 perform more than 5 edits per month, by 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Wikipedia. As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because English is such a widely used language, such users may seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language because the English Wikipedia tends to contain more information about general subjects. Successful collaborations have been developed between non-native English speakers who successfully add content to the English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them. The English Wikipedia has an Arbitration Committee that consists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between editors of the online encyclopedia. The Committee was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the power he had formerly held as owner of the site. When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each, since then, the Committee has gradually expanded its membership to 18 arbitrators. Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, some of Wikipedias sister projects have emulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions, for instance, in 2007, an Arbitration Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsgericht

English Wikipedia
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Logo of the English Wikipedia

13.
Conspiracy theory
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Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is a derogatory one, people formulate conspiracy theories to explain, for example, power relations in social groups and the perceived existence of evil forces. Conspiracy theories have chiefly psychological or socio-political origins, some people prefer socio-political explanations over the insecurity of encountering random, unpredictable, or otherwise inexplicable events. Some philosophers have argued that belief in conspiracy theories can be rational, the Oxford English Dictionary defines conspiracy theory as the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties, spec. A belief that some covert but influential agency is responsible for an unexplained event, as a neutral term, conspiracy is derived from Latin con- and spirare. In many respects, they have a right to be angry, the phrase conspiracy theory is not neutral. It is value-laden and carries with it condemnation, ridicule, and it is a lot like the word cult, which we use to describe religions we do not like. Clare Birchall at Kings College London describes conspiracy theory as a form of knowledge or interpretation. By acquiring the knowledge, conspiracy theory is considered alongside more legitimate modes of knowing. The relationship between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge, Birchall claims, is far closer than common dismissals of conspiracy theory would have us believe, other popular knowledge might include alien abduction narratives, gossip, some new age philosophies, religious beliefs, and astrology. Harry G. West discusses conspiracy theories as a part of American popular culture, comparing them to hypernationalism, some theories have dealt with censorship and excoriation from the law such as the Holocaust denial. Currently, conspiracy theories are present on the Web in the form of blogs and YouTube videos. Whether the Web has increased the prevalence of conspiracy theories or not is a research question. By contrast, the term Watergate conspiracy theory is used to refer to a variety of hypotheses in which those convicted in the conspiracy were in fact the victims of a deeper conspiracy. In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future, as one basic American police academy text defines it, When a crime requires a large number of people, a conspiracy is formed. Conspiracy theory examines the actions of secretive coalitions of individuals. S, sociologist Türkay Salim Nefes underlines the political nature of conspiracy theories. He suggests that one of the most important characteristics of these accounts is their attempt to unveil the real, according to Barkun, the appeal of conspiracism is threefold, First, conspiracy theories claim to explain what institutional analysis cannot. They appear to sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing

Conspiracy theory
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The Eye of Providence, or the all-seeing eye of God, seen here on the US $1 bill, has been taken by some to be evidence of a conspiracy involving the founders of the United States.

14.
Scribd
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Scribd /ˈskrɪbd/ is a digital library and e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. In addition, Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its publishing platform. Scribds e-book subscription service is available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, Scribd has 80 million users, and has been referred to as the Netflix for books. Scribd began as a site to host and share documents, while at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers. His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his research published. Adler wanted to create a way to publish and share written content online. He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the class of Y Combinator in the summer of 2006. There, Scribd received its initial $12,000 in seed funding, Scribd was called the Youtube for documents, allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its document reader. The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds, in its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008. It also ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore, in June 2009. Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital copies of their work online. That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell e-books on Scribd, the deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd, including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark. In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, proQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009. In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its subscription service for e-books. This gave users unlimited access to Scribd’s library of books for a flat monthly fee. The company also announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins’ catalog available on the subscription service, according to Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its catalog. In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, in May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon & Schuster. These titles included works from such as, Ray Bradbury, Mary Higgins Clark, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman. Scribd added audiobooks to its service in November 2014 and comic books in February 2015

Scribd

15.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. As of February 2017, there are more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each minute, as of April 2017, the website is ranked as the second most popular site in the world by Alexa Internet, a web traffic analysis company. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day

16.
Secondary source
–
In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. However, as discussed in detail in the section below on classification, secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. Primary and secondary are relative terms, and some sources may be classified as primary or secondary, depending on how they are used. A third level, the source, such as an encyclopedia or dictionary, resembles a secondary source in that it contains analysis. Many sources can be considered either primary or secondary, depending on the context in which they are used, moreover, the distinction between primary and secondary sources is subjective and contextual, so that precise definitions are difficult to make. Other examples in which a source can be primary and secondary include an obituary or a survey of several volumes of a journal counting the frequency of articles on a certain topic. Whether a source is regarded as primary or secondary in a context may change. Attempts to map or model scientific and scholarly communication need the concepts of primary, secondary, one such model is the UNISIST model of information dissemination. Within such a model these concepts are defined in relation to other. Some other modern languages use more than one word for the English word source, German usually uses Sekundärliteratur for secondary sources for historical facts, leaving Sekundärquelle to historiography. A Sekundärquelle is a source which can tell about a lost Primärquelle, such as a letter quoting from minutes which are no longer known to exist, in general, secondary sources are self-described as review articles or meta-analysis. Primary source materials are defined as original research papers written by the scientists who actually conducted the study. An example of source material is the Purpose, Methods, Results. A survey of work in the field in a primary peer-reviewed source is secondary source information. This allows secondary sourcing of recent findings in areas where full review articles have not yet been published, a book review that contains the judgment of the reviewer about the book is a primary source for the reviewers opinion, and a secondary source for the contents of the book. A summary of the book within a review is a secondary source, secondary sources in history and humanities are usually books or scholarly journals, from the perspective of a later interpreter, especially by a later scholar. In the humanities, a reviewed article is always a secondary source. The delineation of sources as primary and secondary first arose in the field of historiography, in scholarly writing, an important objective of classifying sources is to determine the independence and reliability of sources

Secondary source
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Scipione Amati 's History of the Kingdom of Voxu (1615) an example of a secondary source.